Thursday, 5 June 2014

Seven Ugly Truths About Content Marketing

I never understood why so many businesses seem to misconstrue the very concept of content. Most content does not represent a product or service that well. It even became painfully clear to me that a lot of content is not optimised for organic search at all. To make matters worse, businesses do not seem to think about the receiving end of content: the very people who are supposed to read the content or should I say refrain from reading it because the content is not informative or just plain the equivalent of a giant corporate ego-trip shouting out how great their products and services are. It's the ugly truth about a lot of content in 2014. To further explore this ugly truth I found an article with a very practical overview of content faux-pas. Read it and wheep!

Ugly Truth #1: Everyone wants to create content, but no one wants to discuss promotion and distribution

In today’s crowded digital world, assigning no distribution or promotion plan is a fool proof way to make sure your content will not be viewed. The old model of “one and done” is over.

I had an amazing, but stunning conversation recently that illustrate this perfectly. I shared an advance content budget for paid and native advertising with a client and was met with resistance off the bat. His response, “Why would we do that? We could use that money for a conference.”

Shocking response? No. I countered with addressing the great benefit of digital and paid content, “While the conference might be worth while, you may only reach maybe 50-75 people at one time for an hour. Online, I can reach 5X to 10X more people, twenty-four hours a day. While you are sleep, your content is seen in other parts of the world that far exceed the face-to-face conference.”

Paid search and native advertising (sponsored content) gets the shaft because simply your executives and experts are not sure how it works.

Fun fact: 70% of marketers say they lack a consistent or integrated content strategy, despite the fact that 82% of content marketers see positive ROI for their inbound marketing.

My role is to wrangle my content creators together so we can “pull on the same string.” Unifying your strategy is important not only for content marketing sake, but also for all the areas your content will be distributed: website, campaigns, annual conferences, social media, and public relations effort.

Kristina Halvorson, author of Content Strategy for the Web, describes content strategy as “planning for the creation, delivery, and governance of useful, usable content.”

My documented strategy: what we plan to create that is approved by all involved, when it is to be delivered, how we plan to use it and repurpose, and what channels will it be distributed. Success metrics are defined by the team and reported on a monthly basis.

Ugly Truth #3: Many folks create content they want to publish not what the customer needs.

In my opinion this is the ugliest truth of all. In my former PR role, I had the luxury of driving what content was created because my stakeholders (editors and reporters) drove what content they want. Why? They knew what the reader wanted or what is most interesting to them.

As a content marketer working with highly specialized experts, I run into what a call “academic professor syndrome.” This syndrome of sharing information only the professor is interested in rather than the audience reappears often in my work to create content for the market.

Make sure your customer has a seat at the table by validating the content idea with research. I use the following to questions to guide this conversation:

Review the number of Google searches it appears in

Research in trades and national news

Perform a small number of searches on social media: Linkedin and Twitter

See what others are writing about on the contra of that idea

What your expert think is “cool” maybe better position for a blog, but not much else that takes more resources and time to write.

Ugly Truth #4: Your content is created in a silo

I recently met with an executive that adeptly identified that no one was really thinking about the big picture. Why? Most of your content writers are focused on their specific piece and not its greater impact. When you create content for your audience, you no longer think in silos. You try to build content that can be used and written across the company, not just the division.

How can you combat content silos? Create a company-wide editorial calendar. This is not an easy achievement as several of your “silos” will lament how this cannot be done since their business is “different.” Step back and ask four questions:

Is this content coherent with a bigger strategy or a one-off?

Will this piece be of value or is it noise?

Is this a topic of interest to our audience or do we (being the marketing team) want to push a specific message or campaign?

Does this tell a brand story?

You can start breaking down silos once you realize there is a broader story to tell.

Ugly Truth #5: Your content is probably one and done

This goes back to Ugly Truth #1. Organizations need to accept that in order to compete in a crowded marketplace, you need to put dollars behind your content. Jay Baer said it best, “Companies need to market their marketing. You have to consider that when you’re attempting to break through the enormous amount of digital clutter, it’s where social media and content really work together. “

Perhaps it is time to put some paid media behind your content effort. Think about your audience. Start researching what social media channels they engage in. In addition to paid media, another alternative is to use public relations to gain earn media.

I believe earned media is the new media for modern marketers: PR folks are now working on placement not only with reporter from national or regional publications, but also bloggers, Twitter influencers, and other new media targets. Want to amplify your content, puts some PR muscle behind it.

Ugly Truth #6: Interesting content needs to have a call to action. Interesting on its own isn’t enough

Probably one of the most challenging truths to convey to contributors. A lot of times when I discuss the call to action (CTA), I am often met with resistance. In fact one stakeholder shared the following, “Isn’t it obvious that our thought leadership speaks for itself?”

Pawan Deshpande wrote a poignant post why CTAs are important, “Without a call-to-action, content marketing efforts amount to little more than writing exercises. It’s not enough to publish useful information; you want readers to engage with you and take an action that will provide value for your business.”

Ugly Truth #7: Few marketers evaluate the performance of the content

If you want more money, you will need to your program is worth the time, resources, and money.

So where to start? First and foremost see how your content is performing on your site and social platforms. Are folks sharing or downloading the content? Has the media picked up the report?